Digital 2025: AI Accelerates, YouTube Tops User Charts, Social Ad Spend Soars and More

We Are Social, the socially-led creative agency, and Meltwater, a global leader in media, social and consumer intelligence, have released Digital 2025, their latest annual report on social media and digital trends worldwide.  

Digital 2025 shows that AI’s momentum is accelerating, social media is increasingly important for brand discovery, and ad spend has increased significantly across digital, social and influencer.

Brand discovery grows on social 

According to Digital 2025, global social media user identities now stand at 5.24 billion, an increase of 4.1 percent over the past 12 months. The typical internet user spends two hours and 21 minutes using social media each day. 

Importantly for marketers, half of all adult social media users now visit social platforms with the intention of learning more about brands; a figure that has steadily increased over the last year. Instagram tops the research charts, with 62.3 percent of its adult users researching brands on the platform. Facebook ranks second, (52.5 percent) with TikTok third (51.5 percent). Digital 2025 also shows that 22 percent of active social media users follow influencers or other experts on social channels. However, this figure jumps to 30.8 percent for women aged 16 to 24.

Social platforms vie for top spot 

YouTube was the ‘most used’ social media platform at the start of 2025, with an active user base 16 percent larger than second placed WhatsApp; Facebook, Instagram and TikTok make up the top five. When it comes to the world’s ‘favourite’ social platform, Instagram tops the charts, with 16.6 percent of social media users pledging their allegiance. WhatsApp ranks second with 16 percent, while Facebook comes in third, with 13.1 percent.  

However, there is good news for TikTok, whose Android user base spent almost 35 hours using the platform’s app in November 2024; the average monthly time that the typical TikTok user spends using the platform’s Android app increased by almost two hours between August and November. The 6.6 billion TikToks tagged with “#FYP” attracted an incremental 24 trillion views in 2024 alone. 

When it comes to breakthrough platforms, Threads now has 320 million monthly active users, of which more than 100 million are active each day, and topped the ‘active user growth’ rankings at the end of 2024. Bluesky has attracted more than 30 million registered users, but data.ai reported that the app still had fewer than 25 million monthly active users at the end of November 2024.

Digital and social ad spend grows - again 

The increasing importance of digital in the advertising landscape is reflected in ad spend figures. Marketers spent US$1.1 trillion on ads in 2024, with global spend increasing by $75 billion – 7.3 percent – compared to 2023. Digital channels now account for 72.7 percent of worldwide ad investment, with online spend exceeding US$790 billion last year; a year-on-year increase of 10.3 percent (+$74 billion). In fact, digital ad spend has more than doubled since 2019. 

Within the digital landscape, social media ad spend has increased to $243 billion, a 15% rise year-on-year. And brands’ continued interest in influencer marketing is clear, with a 14% increase in global influencer marketing spend year-on-year and annual influencer investment now at $35 billion. 

ChatGPT makes gains 

Digital 2025’s app data showcases the rising interest in, and use of, AI. ChatGPT tops the AI leaderboard, with its mobile app averaging more than a quarter of a billion monthly active users between September and November 2024. It was also one of the world’s most downloaded apps during that period, placing eighth in data.ai’s global ranking across all app categories. Data also shows that ChatGPT.com had an average of 310 million unique monthly visitors between September and November, who generated a combined 3.5 billion visits to the platform’s dotcom domain.

Digital 2025 is a 630+ page report that covers data points from across the entire online ecosystem, from social media to smart devices, gaming to social commerce. Other key social media highlights from the report include: 

• The world’s social audiences use 6.83 platforms per month on average
• More than 1 in 3 active social media users say that they use social platforms for work-related activities. 
• 23.6 percent of adult social media users now say that finding content related to sports is one of the main reasons why they visit social platforms.
• Linkedin’s global ad reach has increased by a hefty 17 percent over the past year, and Pinterest reported ad reach grew by more than 10 percent in 2024.

And from the wider digital ecosystem: 

• Global internet users have passed the 5.5 billion mark, with 136 million new users added in the last 12 months
• 56 percent of online adults in the world’s top economies make online purchases every week, which points to an online shopping universe of roughly 1.7 billion in any given seven-day period
• People over the age of 50 are underserved by the world’s marketers; across many of the world’s biggest economies, people over the age of 50 account for more than half of all consumer spend
• More than 1 in 5 online adults (22.1 percent) now listens to at least one podcast each week
• The number of connected adults expressing concern about their online privacy is declining. Fewer than 3 in 10 adult internet users say that they’re worried about how companies use their personal data online today, with that figure down by 7.1 percent compared on 2023 

Toby Southgate, global group CEO at We Are Social said: “Social is where brands can win or lose - it’s central to brand discovery, consumer engagement, and commerce. At the same time, AI is revolutionising how we search, create, and interact, while influencers continue to shape content trends and consumer behaviours. The opportunities for marketers to drive meaningful engagement have never been broader, but the complexity of digital and social media - evident in our 630+ page report - means there’s no single route to success. To create effective work, brands need to understand the cultural nuances of the online world, and create ideas worth talking about. Those who do will make an impact.”

“With digital ad spend exceeding $790 billion in 2024 and social media ad spend growing more than 15% within that, it's clear that businesses are investing more than ever in capturing consumer attention. Along with this growing investment comes the growing need to prove ROI and show results based on marketing campaigns. With user behavior on social platforms continuing to shift, teams need data to inform decisions about what platforms to prioritize and create strategies for,” said Alexandra Bjertnæs, chief strategy officer at Meltwater. 

Read the full report here.